


Warmth at the End of the Tunnel

by combustspontaneously



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Comfort, F/M, competent!scott, fugue state, mental lapses, sorta?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 14:47:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2313332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/combustspontaneously/pseuds/combustspontaneously
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It glowed, warm lights spilling out into the grass from its windows. It was a sight so welcome that for a moment, Lydia wondered if perhaps she was still in her bed at home dreaming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warmth at the End of the Tunnel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starmagnitudesix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starmagnitudesix/gifts).



> This was originally meant to be quite a bit longer, with Allison playing a more central role, but I ended up cutting quite a bit of that in the interest of time.   
> This was done for the TW rare pair exchange c:

The temperature had been well below the thirties when Lydia pulled out of her driveway hours ago. Her breath had pooled into the air in a tumultuous tumble, one after the other. Her fingers had danced along the controls at her side, her ring finger dipping down against one of the controls almost unthinkingly. In synchronization, the windows slid down with it. The wind stung her face as she tore down road. She hardly felt it. Her hands shook even as she pressed them tight against the wheel, but she still refused to raise the window again. There was something terribly alive in driving like this, something human in the inconvenience of it all.

She didn’t know where she was going, nor when she would stop. Leaving just seemed like the least terrible option. After Allison had… well. Lydia had not only lost her dearest friend, she had lost everything. She’d lost herself. Life kept going, sure, and the Earth hadn’t ceased to turn, but something in her went dormant. She was too painfully aware of the gaping hole that Allison had left to notice the same emptiness inside herself; after a while, it seemed it was too late to find it ever again. She did what she needed to to survive, to keep pressing past the injustice of it all, but in the process she became an empty shell of a girl. So one day she just walked outside, stepped into the car, and… well, she didn’t know.

The sky sweetened into cotton candy pinks and purples, orange streaked bliss. The night just kept on growing colder, and beneath her thin sleeping gown, Lydia was shaking. Thick forest surrounded her on either side, the moss and shrubbery inching onto the roads here and there. The path went from meticulously poured concrete to cracked asphalt to dirt and gravel. She was hours away from any sort of civilization; probably the farthest she’d ever gone on her own. The gas light was still blinking a violent red in the corner of her eye; it had been for a while. She had meant to stop at the last station she passed, but it had already grown dark outside and it looked so lonely out in the wilderness she couldn’t force herself to get out the car. She let the car roll to a stop, the lights on her dashboard flickering then dimming. And then she was sitting alone in the perfumed haze of twilight, purple light suspending her in the air. All in all, not the brightest idea she’d ever had.

She blinked, watching the empty road in front of her, letting her consciousness come slowly back into focus. She passed the last rest stop, dilapidated and abandoned looking, twenty minutes ago. It would be faster to call AAA. She fumbled, fingers slipping around her purse, until she came up with her phone. Her battery was still half there, but the signal was… less present. “Great,” she murmured faintly.

With a purse of her lips, she swung the car door open and stepped out to the shock of harshly cold asphalt against her bare skin. She flinched, hissing through her teeth. In her absent minded escape she had forgotten her shoes. 

Lydia clenched her teeth and forced herself to step down anyway. There had to be service somewhere, after all.

She wandered, feet padding lightly down the abandoned road as her headlights faded farther and farther down the road.

Goosebumps raised on her skin as she pulled her thin gown closer around her trembling frame, clenching her chattering teeth. Her feet were numb and rubbed raw by the time she found it, perched delicately at the edge of the coast. It glowed, warm lights spilling out into the grass from its windows. It was a sight so welcome that for a moment, Lydia wondered if perhaps she was still in her bed at home dreaming. A small part of her whispered at the back of her mind, warning her of the chances that a serial killer lived in there and she’d find dead bodies hanging on the walls or something just as grisly. But it was cold and she still had no cell service… honestly she didn’t have much of a choice. She gritted her teeth and tossed her hair back, picking her way down off the road and towards the house regardless. She was too pretty to be brutally murdered anyway.

Up close, the house’s warm glow seemed to strengthen. All of a sudden, it seemed silly to worry that something evil could ever dwell here long. She steeled herself as she faced the worn wooden door, the welcome mat a sweet reprieve for her aching feet. She knocked once before she heard rustling and the door swung open.

The man who answered looked down at her in surprise. “You’re not Stiles.”

Lydia blinked up at him, eyes sliding over to the rifle he held in one hand. She tried not to gulp visibly and likely failed.

“No,” she piped up, eyes not leaving the firearm. “No, I am not. What the hell is a Stiles?”

He laughed, a soft, comforting rumble that seemed to warm the air. And honestly, it could use some warming up.  He followed her eyes to his rifle, flushing sheepishly. “Oh – sorry about that. You can never be too careful when you live alone in the woods.” He stepped further inside, leaning the ugly thing against the wall, near the coat rack. It hardly seemed out of place here, now that she thought about it. “Hey, are you alright? Jesus, you must be freezing. Come in…” He shut the door hurriedly after her, trapping the toasty cabin air in. Lydia gripped the fabric of her nightgown, eyes fixed on the floor. “Hey…”

Lydia looked up through her eyelashes, feeling suddenly very… bare. In more ways than one. A small lamp and a crackling fire were the only things keeping the cabin from complete darkness, and in the warm glow the man was… beautiful. Scruff covered the lower half of his face, dark hair curling around his ears and dipping into his eyes. And his eyes were the warmest she’d ever seen.

And they were currently skimming her body. She could barely help the small smirk that blossomed on the corner of her lips. She was, of course, beautiful. She’d always known that; Jackson used to remind her when they were alone in the dark, his sweaty chest pressed against hers. It was the only time he ever told her. Towards the end he barely told her anything at all. She had ceased to care.

She could hardly blame the man for just looking at the scantily clad women that appeared on his doorstep, shifting unsteadily on her feet. As her consciousness drifted elusively about her, the walls swaying, the floor shaking, she could barely focus on standing upright, let alone worrying about the placement of his eyes. When his eyes snapped back to hers, he flushed, cheeks reddening in the low light. He cleared his throat and in the dull hum, it was loud and stark.

“I’m sorry,” he rushed to say, refusing to meet her eyes. He rubbed his shoulder shyly, an odd, yet curiously adorable, look on the muscular man. “I shouldn’t have… I didn’t mean to…” he shook his head. “You must be cold. Stay here, I’ll get you something you can put over that.” He disappeared down a dark hallway and Lydia rocked back on her feet with a smile as she watched his retreating back, suddenly very taken with the sweet man. When he disappeared from sight, she turned to peer around the warm, if crowded, space. There were no dead bodies strung on the walls – a welcome relief – but there were a few paintings. She looked a little closer at the signature scrawled along the bottom to see if he had painted them, but then remembered that she wouldn’t recognize his name anyway. Focusing on the jagged scribbles in the low light made her dizzy. Books were stacked along the walls, most looking rather worn, pages curling a little at the edges as if more than just a few of them had been dropped in water. Near the fire, resting beside an overstuffed armchair, was a wooden carving, the floor littered with shavings. It was only half carved, a snarling wolf taking shape out of the wooden block. Its little wooden fangs looked as if they were still sharp enough to draw blood. She barely realized that she had reached out a finger to test her theory until he appeared behind her.

“Do you like it?” his voice was calm, delighted, and an utter surprise.

With a cry, she startled, losing her balance. Her bare feet, numb from the cold and raw from the abuse of the heavily wooded terrain, tangled in the worn rugs.

“Oh - !” a breath squeezed out of her lungs as she fell seemingly in slow motion. The sharp edge of the table flashed in the corner of her eye as the world spun by her. She whimpered and hated herself for it. Her eyes clenched shut in preparation for the blinding pain – but it didn’t come. Instead… there was warmth… and a sudden sturdiness, like – like, finding solid ground after months of sea sickness. Her breath stilled in her throat. He had caught her; she could feel the warmth of his hand tangled in her hair – right where she would’ve struck the edge, and the other at the small of her back, burning through the silk. Her fingers were gripped in his shirt, shoulders curled inwards.

Slowly she opened her eyes, finding his, wide and endlessly deep, staring back at her. His breathing was sharp and uneven; she could feel the push and pull of it against her lips, the warm gusts of breath ghosting over her skin. The fingers entwined in her hair curled almost instinctively. It felt nice – protective. “I’m sorry,” he breathed. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” She was suddenly and painfully aware of how closely her body was pressed against his. He felt solid against her, corporal and _real_. His fingers slipped and brushed against her pale skin and she could feel it burning directly to her core.

He sucked in a sharp breath between his teeth. “You’re freezing,” he said. The world seemed to blur at the edges.

“I…” the words wouldn’t come; they got lost somewhere between her brain and her tongue, fuddled in the confusion. Her lips felt dry and cracked. Her tongue darted to wet them, but to no avail. His eyebrows furrowed. It was getting harder to focus on his eyes, his face. His lovely face.

“How long were you out in the cold? Jesus, I need to get you in bed,” he flushed, as if realizing the connotation of his words. “Oh; er, I didn’t mean…”

Lydia giggled, and the world spun with the effort. Her eyes glazed over, the hand gripped in his shirt finally loosening its hold. “It’s a bit cold out here isn’t it?” she managed. And the worry in his eyes was the last thing she would remember seeing.

Xx

She slept for two days.

She shivered under a mountain of quilts, stirred to a half-aroused consciousness to eat and take medicine. She would barely remember these spells of lucidity, just the scalding hot soup slipping its way down her throat, burning her tongue and setting her insides aflame. And the warm hand at the back of her neck, supporting her head. She would always remember his hands.

“Lydia?”

On the third day, she finally woke up. She hummed; her mouth tasted like ash and dust. It felt like a wasteland. _Ah yes,_ she groused, _my dignity must have crawled into it and died._

The man was watching her when she finally cracked open her eyes, finding the room too bright for her liking. His eyes lit up when he saw that she had woken up, and Lydia discovered a new kind of brightness she didn’t mind nearly as much. When she finally got her eyes to focus, she found the room nearly barren. Aside from the bed she was lying in, the only other features of significance were the window behind her, and the currently occupied wooden chair, rocking on rickety, uneven legs. A foot tapped imperceptibly on the hardwood flooring. She slid her eyes up his disheveled body and noted the crooked line of his jaw, like a child’s drawing come to life – a flawed work of art, but anyone could plainly see the love and care poured into it. He ran a hand through his hair, overgrown and badly managed, pushing it to the side. He was sighing when he finally looked up. For a second, before his eyes registered her consciousness, she could see the days-old staleness of worry creased into the lines beneath his eyes, floating unsurely in the depth of his eyes. But then his eyes met hers, and his entire face transformed; she fought the urge to look away. It was like staring at the sun. Deep inside her, she felt something aching.

“Lydia,” her name rushed out of his mouth. A breath of relief. “Hi. Hi, I’m so glad you’re awake.” He grinned, all the worry and age melting into the warmth.

She stared at him. He was just as cute as she remembered; cuter even, in the slowly filtering daylight. “How do you know my name?”

His gaze dropped to the floor shyly. He rubbed the back of his neck, flushing. “I went looking and found your car; your driver’s license was sticking out in your purse. Your phone too, if you need to call someone.”

Her phone. _Shit._ She rubbed her face wearily. Her parents would be ballistic. Something in her mouth soured, and she twisted her pink mouth. “No, I don’t need to call anyone.”

He looked at her curiously. “Okay,” his voice was slow, confusion coloring his tone, but he dropped the subject, for which Lydia was grateful “You got pretty bad hypothermia being stuck out in the cold so long.”

She stared at him dolefully, waiting for him to go on. He shook his head but elaborated.

“Why were you driving with the window rolled down?”

She wished she knew. “How do you know it was rolled down?”

“It was still that way when I found it; you’re lucky I got to it first. It’s a damn good car.”

“I could have rolled it down after it broke down,” she pointed out, pulling the top quilt closer to her.

“You could have,” he admitted, his voice slow and soft. “But you wouldn’t have gotten such bad hypothermia from the five minute walk from where I found your car to here… even in your current… attire.”

Lydia glanced down and found that she was still in her nightgown, with a thick, worn flannel thrown over it. How mortifying.

“I should probably change,” she said in a small voice. The smile he offered was small and pitying, but kind nonetheless. “I have some jeans and shirts that be… more your size in the closet.”

She nodded and struggled to sit up, waving away his helpful hands as she pushed off the half dozen blankets he’d buried her in. She eyed the horrendously plaid heap with the beginnings of a smile, before shaking her head and swinging her legs over the side. She bit the inside of her cheeks as the quick movement set her teeth on edge, her eyes fluttering shut. A quick intake of breath to her right preceded the warm, steading hand on the small of her back. “Are you alright?” he asked quietly, concern bleeding through.

“I’m fine,” she bit out, opening her eyes to find him far closer than she remembered. “I’m fine.”

He frowned but didn’t protest when she slid slowly off the bed, gently getting to her feet. Her legs were still a little shaky as she regained her bearings. She eyed her feet, dirt still clinging to the creases between her toes, and the creased and wrinkled nightgown that brushed the soft skin of her thighs, lacy fringe ending only an inch lower than the red flannel she’d unknowingly borrowed.

“I understand what you meant by more my size, now,” she commented lightly, smiling gently at the much larger man. “You look good in it though,” he said softly. When she turned to look at him, lips parted in question, he had dropped his gaze, intently studying a constellation of moles dappling the inside of his arm. His cheeks were aflame, as if only just realizing the connotation of his words.

Her own cheeks pinked. “I look good in everything,” she informed him, the haughty expression betrayed by the underlying weakness in her voice, in her knees.

He laughed anyway and she hated the way her heart twisted in her chest.

She realized with a sudden shock that she still didn’t know her savior’s name; for a reason she couldn’t quite discern, she was struck with a heady desire to know it. To taste it on her tongue and know what kind of syllables existed in any tongue the human race had ever invented that could give a name to such boundless warmth.

“So,” she piped up. “You know my name. Isn’t it courtesy to even the playing field, mysterious mountain man?”

His eyes crinkled when he smiled. “Scott,” he said. “Scott McCall. Mountain man extraordinaire at your service.”

_Scott. Scott McCall at my service._ “Well, Scott,” she tried it out – reveling, basking. “I don’t suppose you have a shower around here? Unless you bathe in a nearby stream?”

“Never again; the nymphs would sacrifice me to their gods,” his eyes widened with mock solemnity.

“Hmph.”

Cute _and_ dorky. If the nymphs’ gods were really out there, they were testing her. She’ll be damned if _this_ is the first test she fails.

Xx

One steaming hot shower later, with a drippy faucet and terrible water pressure, Lydia finally rubbed all the dirt and wear from her body. The bathroom mirror was water stained in some places, and cracked in the upper right hand corner, but it worked fine all the same. She tilted her head as she considered her pale figure. She had grown slighter in the months without Allison, notching her bras on the last hooks, and finding space in the suddenly overgrown sweaters and skirts. There was a pink scratch running down her shin, likely from the previous night, though she didn’t remember getting it.

She padded back out into the hallway and found the house utterly unoccupied. In the daylight, she found it more spacious than she had when she first stumbled in, a shaking, underdressed mess. The clothes Scott had given her fit remarkably well; they were a little tight over the chest, and long on top of that, but it was easy to tell they were women’s clothes. A soft blue flannel (really, did all rural type people wear exclusively flannel? Or was it just this guy?) and a soft pair of jeans hugged her as she drifted aimlessly out into the hallway. It wasn’t really anything she’d wear elsewhere, but it was better than anything else on hand. There was something oddly familiar yet out of place about it.

Who did it belong to? She mused quietly, searching the photos placed sporadically on the walls of the hallway for a hint of the woman who might have once worn these clothes. She imagined another girl in these exact same clothes living here with Scott, filling up the empty space with her presence, the girl who had all the sunshine of his smile any time she wanted, just for her, falling into bed with him at night and dragging her nails through his curls – she sucked in a breath and snapped her gaze away from the photo she’d been perusing. Jealousy pooled in her stomach, vicious and unapologetic. Shame flooded her. She shouldn’t be feeling this way about a man she just met. Her nails bit into the skin of her palms. With a great deal of force, she shoved it to the back of her mind. It wasn’t important; she’d leave soon anyway, and they’d both be on their way. The thought left a stale, bitter taste in her mouth, which she ignored dutifully.

She shuffled slowly into the large living room, fingers dragging along the walls. Still, there was no sign of Scott. It was a good thing perhaps; she didn’t want him to see her so spiteful for a woman who might not even exist. She bit her lip and tugged at the edges of her sleeves. Wasn’t it rude to be in someone’s home when they weren’t there themselves?

A laugh bubbled in her throat, oddly detached and eerie in the silence of the empty cabin. She shook her head; she’d passed the border of rudeness when she showed up nameless and nearly naked on his doorstep right before losing consciousness in a fit of hypothermia. Yes, she’d say that that ship had long sailed. What would her mother say?

A pang of guilt hit her; her parents really would worry. She tried to bring herself to care, and when that didn’t work, rationed that if she didn’t call soon, they’d likely call the authorities and cause all sorts of inconvenience. She snapped her phone up from on top of the counter where Scott had left it. He had had the good sense to turn it off when he found it, and when she turned it back on found a decent amount of battery and a modest number of bars. Ignoring the thirty-eight calls and 102 messages, she sent one off to her mother, saying only that she was safe and not to worry. It was still sending when she heard Scott outside in the form of tires snapping fallen leaves and twigs.

When she walked outside, Scott was slamming the door of a rustic pick-up truck closed. He jumped when he saw her blinking up at him from just outside the side door. “Jesus,” he closed his eyes and sagged against the closed door, clutching a melodramatic hand over his heart. “You scared me. Do you ever do anything predictable?”

She twisted her mouth, thinking of her spontaneous daytrip and nights spent shivering in a stranger’s bed. “Apparently not,” she said in a small voice.

His eyes widened. “Oh, no, I didn’t mean –,”

Lydia shook her head, waving away whatever apology he had been poised to give. It wasn’t necessary. She had enough of apologies these days. “Don’t worry about it.”

He frowned, but didn’t fight it, eyes still crinkled up and self-admonishing. His eyes crinkled up a lot, Lydia noted. She shifted uncomfortably. It shouldn’t have been as endearing as it was.

Scott cleared his throat loudly, looking away and rubbing the back of his neck. In the sunlight she could clearly see the red pooling beneath his tanned skin on the apples of his cheeks. “I see the clothes fit you.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

There was something fierce in the set of his jaw, glinting in his eyes as the sunlight filtered through the leafy canopy. For a moment, Lydia mistook it for lust, the same expression boys had looked at her with since she was fourteen. But there was something unbearably sad in the cramped hunch of his shoulders and the grim line of his mouth. It was something she recognized.

He took a deep breath, the air crystalizing into white as his nostrils flared. One shake of his head and the expression was gone. Lydia wanted to say something, disrupt the cancerous tension that had built up in the space between them, but at that moment, her phone rang. It sounded strangely artificial in the midst of the forest, too falsely bright and chipper.

She let it ring, frozen.

“Are you gonna get that?” he gestured to the phone in her hand.

She thought about it. “No.”

His brow furrowed, a line appearing between them. “Is it your parents? Won’t they worry?”

Her mouth twisted. That was the problem. For the last six months all they did was worry and fret and linger and hover. If anything, her… ‘mental lapse’ was entirely due to the constant stress to appear fine and normal. Anything to get it to stop. “I just…” she looked away from the force of his gaze, warm and concerned. “I don’t want to go home. Not yet.”

Her voice had been barely above a whisper, and she was hardly sure he had even heard her. There was a pause, and when she finally found the courage to meet his eyes again, they were unreadable. She watched in surprise as he turned around and lifted an armful of grocery bags from the bed of his truck. He pushed past her on the way inside, eyes crinkling as he tilted his head towards the warmth of the kitchen. “You coming? I make a mean beef stew.”

Lydia stared after him, blinking. A small, soft smile touched her pink mouth, ducking her head as she moved inside, pulling the door closed behind her.

For the first time since Allison died, Lydia thought that she might actually, truly be okay after all.


End file.
